Mars Party of the Decade Reaches Fever Pitch

Robotic missions have landed and operated on Mars before – there have been seven successful missions over the last four decades – but never quite like this. The scope of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, its impressive scientific arsenal, and yes, the seemingly crazy SkyCrane landing system have generated the kind of buzz that allowed #Curiosity and #MSL to finally out-hashtag the #Olympics on Twitter.

An estimated 15,000 people have descended on Pasadena, the center of the robotic space exploration universe, to share in the excitement. One of them is Bill Nye, the Executive Director of the Planetary Society and world’s most famous Science Guy (registered trademark).

“This is the most excitement I’ve seen in my lifetime for a rover mission,” he said, after donning his bow tie. “The stakes are higher than ever before: this rover is the next step in following the water in the search for life.”

The Planetary Society’s Planetfest is sharing the Mars bandwidth with the Mars Society’s annual convention being held in an adjacent conference center. Cross-listed attendees walk between the two buildings, past Pasadena’s stately civic auditorium and a scale model of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

But it’s not only about the seminars on space law and discussions about instrument engineering specs. At BlackStarr‘s Celebrate Curiosity party in downtown Pasadena on Saturday night, MSL engineers, new-space industry types, and intrigued passers-by mingled beneath rows of string lights spanning the courtyard. The DIY sci-fi costumes, which covered a range of production values, were a far cry from the mannequins dressed in Tommy Bahama, watching the festivities from the adjacent storefronts.

It was an occasion to celebrate the possibilities of space exploration and the Herculean effort needed to send a spacecraft like MSL to Mars. Given tonight’s impending “seven minutes of terror,” it was a moment of expectant but ignorant bliss.

Bill Nye poses for a photograph with a fan. (Image credit: CuriousJosh)

“I just love this stuff,” raved Yuriy Tsurkan, a Procurement Agent at Boeing in Long Beach. “But sadly I won’t be able to join the viewing party Sunday night. I have to go to work on Monday,” he says, lamenting the landing’s less-than-primetime schedule.

Around 11 o’clock, partygoers dropped their drinks and their conversations, flocking to the central plaza, where Elon Musk was giving a quick pep talk. “We will not rest,” he says, reaching a crescendo, “until you can all buy a ticket to Mars.” SpaceX t-shirts and other gadgets were launched into the crowd.

Bill Nye was up next, though his talk was drowned out by shouts of “I love you Bill!” from the peanut gallery.

Several futuristic video games filled the plaza, the most germane being a DDR-style rover-landing game, in which various gesticulations resulted in the deployment of the parachute or the firing of the retro-rockets. Over the course of the evening, just a handful of players succeed in a soft landing, and the constant crashes induced pre-traumatic stress disorder among the MSL team members in attendance. “It’s a little hard to watch,” said MSL Mission Operations Engineer Kim Lichtenberg, shielding her eyes, “even though I know it’s not real.”

“This is an extraordinarily difficult mission,” cautions Nye, back in the Planetfest green room. “But hopefully, after tonight’s landing, we will remind everybody how wonderful exploration can be.”